Politics of anticipation: Turkey’s 2017 constitutional referendum and the local 'no' assemblies in Istanbul"

Gokmenoglu, Birgan ORCID: 0000-0001-5839-3351 (2022) Politics of anticipation: Turkey’s 2017 constitutional referendum and the local 'no' assemblies in Istanbul". Social Movement Studies. ISSN 1474-2837

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Abstract

This article engages with the question of coordinating action during transitional and politically volatile times, in high-stakes situations. More specifically, I look at a local assembly that was established to campaign for the ‘no’ vote against regime change in the 2017 constitutional referendum in Turkey, and how it disintegrated at a time when coordinated action was perceived as the only viable strategy by the participants. Based on participant-observation and ethnographic interviews, I argue that instead of framing or strategy, differences in temporal frameworks eroded the basis on which activists usually coordinated their next steps, leading to an unresolvable mismatch in their anticipation of future events, and therefore, in action. I characterize the temporal dynamics of political contestation in such contexts as a ‘politics of anticipation,’ where futurity and temporality themselves become subjects of political contention. As such, this article contributes to the study of anti-authoritarian social movements, studies of time and temporality, and to the sociology of time and the future.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/csms20
Additional Information:	© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
Divisions:	Sociology
Subjects:	J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Date Deposited:	02 Mar 2022 16:09
Last Modified:	16 Nov 2024 08:45
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/113895

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